On The Road Again

Jann Arden  0:08  
Well hello everyone. Welcome to the Gen Arden podcast. It's me Jann Arden, and I'm in my house for 24 hours. I have such a zany schedule right now, but Sarah Burke and I are here. Sarah is at home. She's had a shit show of a week. We're going to talk about that. So this morning, I got up at 1:30am calgary time, Rick Mercer and I had a show in St. John's Newfoundland last night. It was fantastic. The Mary Brown arena. Poppy. No, no and no, but I've got Poppy for a night because I'm back here. Anyway, did the show with Rick wrote in my journal had a quick shower because I thought I'm going to shower now so I don't have to do it in the morning. I actually got four hours and like 20 minutes asleep, I had 53 minutes of deep sleep. If you have an aura ring, you know what I'm talking about. So anyway, we left for the airport at 4:10am. And it was only like a 1516 minute drive. We dropped the rental car off our flight took off on time. 550 we got to Montreal flight took off on time all our luggage transferred over like in 25 minutes. I landed in Calgary, Alberta at 10:35am. That's amazing. At four o'clock this morning, I was closer to London, England that I was to Calgary it is so zany. But anyway, here I am. And I picked up Poppy and his little pal Joni, and I have them and I leave on a flight and overseas flight back to London, England tomorrow at 8pm because I have a gig for the Canadian consulate or something. Right. So what is zany week,

Sarah Burke  1:40  
which is exactly we should also say why we're recording ahead. Caitlin has some personal stuff going on. She'll be back with us next week. So we were just trying to do the best we can with all the flights and everything. And she sends her love and you can follow along with her on socials as you always do.

Jann Arden  1:54  
Yeah, Caitlin's got some some family stuff. And I know what it's like having parents that, you know, have a few little health issues here and there. But yeah, it's gotta be tough. You know, Caitlin, with her little boy and her husband and yeah, you know, she's working on other projects and then has has asked to deal with so us. You and me.

Sarah Burke  2:12  
Might I also add, I think for the first time ever, I beat you in the aura ring, then for the first time ever. This week,

Jann Arden  2:17  
I saw your number you did an 85 This is the first time ever

Sarah Burke  2:21  
I'm going through a phase right now. I'm trying to rewrite my mornings and my before bed routines. And I'm going to admit this to you. Okay, so I'm trying not to smoke pot before bed. Okay, okay. So that's one thing. So I decided to experiment this week, one day this week. I didn't have a lot of meetings in my calendar for the next morning. I said, I want to know what my natural sleep cycle is without smoking pot. I was also looking forward to dreaming again. Apparently you don't dream when you smoked pot before but so I let myself sleep with no alarm. I woke up at 11:50am The whole day was gone. Sarah and I was like, Oh my god. Okay, I guess we're working a little later tonight. But it was an experiment, right? Like, and that's how tired my body has been taxes kicked my ass. Well,

Jann Arden  3:05  
let's back up a bit. And let's talk about the habit of smoking weed before you go to bed. Sure. Because in your mind's eye, you're thinking I have a better sleep when I have a little toot and I'm sure folks that she's not smoking a giant spliff. Couple

Sarah Burke  3:20  
of puffs. Exactly. Okay, I usually have like a little pre roll for like three or four days. I'll just have a few pints before bed. Yeah.

Jann Arden  3:26  
And do you fall asleep quickly? Like when did this start? Let's have a conversation about this. Why did this start high school? So you've been smoking weed before bed since high school?

Sarah Burke  3:36  
Not every day. Okay, every day part I would say maybe University. So just one phase after university. It was just like, chillin with friends and social. But now it's to signal wine downtime. Because sometimes I'm on my laptop. I just started this business. You know, sometimes I'm on my laptop pretty late keeping up with all my new clients. Yeah, it's almost like I can't get myself to put myself to bed. But I fall asleep within 15 minutes and normally sleep really well. What

Jann Arden  4:05  
do you think pot does for you? In general? I'm just curious. Like, like, I've talked about this. I smoked it once with my friend Teresa. I was 18 We ate a giant bag of all dressed potato chips and good decision. You know, and I just never did it again. But you know, I abused alcohol my whole life. But I'm curious about pot because I am absolutely an advocate of gummies of Yeah, of CBD oil of the whole thing. I am your tea. I am your cheerleader. I believe in marijuana. So I just want our listeners to know that. And I think like anything else. It has to be a controlled substance. Yes, sort of in your life. You don't want to be stoned all day long. No, no, no, no, this is a nighttime thing for you. Correct?

Sarah Burke  4:50  
Yeah, I don't normally like do anything until I'm done all of my work and like if I was turning off my laptop, I'm like, Well, I'm gonna have a little hoot like it's literally at the same time. I'm where I'm finishing, it's like a little reward. And I would call it more of a dependency than an addiction. But some people might look at that differently. And I say that because the addiction piece would be if I was having it all day, and I could go, I couldn't go a day without it. Whereas like, you know, if I get a cold, I don't want to smoke like, I can remove it when I need to. But anyway, so I'm working on all that

Jann Arden  5:22  
the SANS marijuana thing has happened, how many nights in a row two. Okay, to refresh two nights in a row, we're fresh, fresh, and good for you. So you, you started dreaming

Sarah Burke  5:32  
started dreaming? So the wildest thing is that the ex boyfriend that showed up in my dream was probably the most insignificant boyfriend I've ever dated. It was maybe a month like I don't even think we made it to the boyfriend conversation. I'm calling it a boyfriend loosely. And like why this guy shows up. So I went to visit him and his partner now, in Nashville, they lived in Nashville. And I was so upset because I forgot a hair serum. And my hair was frizzy. Like, what is this dream?

Jann Arden  6:02  
I don't know. We need to, we need to get a dream specialist on the show, apparently. And you remember quite a few details.

Sarah Burke  6:09  
I woke up feeling like it was so vivid. And so I'm looking forward to more of the dream thing I will also say wasn't hard, not smoking before bad. Like a friend of mine who's got through an addiction who sort of like, helping me look at other perspectives around this said to me, like if you can get through that five minutes, where the craving is there, you'll surprise yourself. And not I would say is true. I'm proud.

Jann Arden  6:30  
Well, when I quit drinking, you should be super proud. And you know if it's something where so what you're having a little to a couple times a week, in the evenings I'm saying like, Yeah, I know that when you were here, you and your pals when you visited last summer had some drinks THC drinks. Yeah. Which I thought was really interesting, because you're not dealing with the hangover and your livers not dealing with alcohol. Yeah,

Sarah Burke  6:55  
it's like drinking like a soda like a something's kind of sweet. So and I do think I'm not someone who, I don't think this is going to be like a cold turkey thing. What I want for myself is to be able to enjoy it. Not every night. But you know, if I'm going to a show and I want to have a little tube before I go into the show, or with friends after baseball, that type of thing. Like, that's where I want to enjoy it. And maybe if I do need it to sleep for my lungs, my little asthmatic lungs, let's move to edibles. Just trying to get that all in order, and it exacerbates ADHD. So

Jann Arden  7:30  
just before we went to air, Sarah's like, I'm going through something really zany right now I'm getting assessed for ADHD and ADHD means what? Okay,

Sarah Burke  7:42  
I'm bringing it up. So I say it properly. Yeah, I would say chaotic brain day. ADHD stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A person with ADHD has differences in brain development and activity that affect attention, the ability to sit still and self control, it can affect a child at school at home and friendships. But the key thing here is there's many women, middle aged women, undiagnosed. They've seen this as a young boys thing forever, many

Jann Arden  8:09  
middle aged women undiagnosed. So could it be compounded by way too many activities to do with kids with work like juggling life in general? So what happens is that you don't really concentrate on any particular task that you're undertaking? Could that be part of it? Or is it just a brain? That's

Sarah Burke  8:30  
a result of it? I would say, okay, so multitasking, the idea of multitasking, but I mean, that's part of your my life.

Jann Arden  8:38  
You have to do that in your world. I mean, you have a podcasting network, you look after a lot of people now you're you were a lot of hats.

Sarah Burke  8:48  
So this is where I never even realized how far back some of my tendencies go. I was a kid, my mom was like, why are you up, get off the computer, you know, in high school at whatever, 10 o'clock 11 o'clock at night. And I would do a project the night before. And I wouldn't feel the like urge to do it until I had a deadline looming. So that's, they call it time blindness in some senses to when you dig really deep into a project and you forget about everything else around you. So it works both ways. Like being very, very focused, hyper focused,

Jann Arden  9:20  
what prompted you to think that you had this or that this was an issue in your life as a young 30 something year old woman what I

Sarah Burke  9:28  
think feeling, feeling overwhelmed with like, with how many things are going on at one time and not being able to decide what to do first and I was just talking to my therapist about it. We've sort of been talking about it for a while now. And then it became time to be like, Okay, do you want to do an actual diagnosis now? So that's the point.

Jann Arden  9:45  
So she undertaking it. Yeah. So what does that entail? Now?

Sarah Burke  9:49  
So there's a couple examinations because you do like if you're going to go on medication, which I might, you're going to have to go through your family doctor to actually be prescribed the medication but you My family doctor had at one point prescribed, like, oh, you should, you should think about therapy. So I feel like that part is gonna be great, because you're already doing that. Yeah, in therapy, like, she would trust that this word is coming from someone she sent me to, you know what I mean? So that part's really interesting. But yeah, a lot of people have to go, like do this full diagnosis through their family doctor. So in my case, I'm going to have, my therapist likes to do two separate examinations. So it's almost like, if one is a little off, you have the second one as a backup almost, and then she'll send everything to the family doctor,

Jann Arden  10:32  
do you feel a sense of relief, that there is something that you are sort of running uphill against and have been for quite some time, and that may be with medication, it might alleviate some of your tendencies to not be able to decide on the task that you want to undertake? Or, or being more focused on the things that you do? undertake? I think it's really important to Yeah, stop long enough in our lives to think could it be better? This doesn't feel normal? In my mind? Yeah. And could it be better? That's a great question to ask yourself, Could it be better could my life could the way I'm thinking, dealing with relationships, approaching my job, accomplishing tasks, getting simple things done, whether it's three loads of laundry that have been sitting in a closet for two weeks that you look at? And it's not procrastination, either. It's deeper than that. And it's more complicated than Yes, putting things off. I have none of that, in my life. My I have a lot of things going on at any given time. And I actually thrive with that, because what I have achieved, believe it or not, and it took a while is I have a really excellent work life balance. Yes,

Sarah Burke  11:42  
you do. And I would say I'm working on that stuff. Well, listen, when

Jann Arden  11:46  
I was your age, it was all hands on deck. I was having all these personal relationships and hooking up and doing my work and taking on new things and traveling constantly and dealing with management stuff and business stuff with record companies and record I'm telling you, it is all hands on deck. And this is the time to do that. But what I've gotten to now, I'll tell you what, five, six years ago, I couldn't have had the kind of schedule that I have right now. And feel well, Ray, my sobriety helps. It's unbelievable what that does for being awake, waking up for your alarm showing up. Yeah, you know, I'm in the lobby, Chris said for 10am. I was there for 9am. And he was sitting on a bench and I wheeled out of the elevator and he grabbed my suitcase and off we went and we keep a really, really tight schedule. Yeah. But I'm, I've never even thought about am I having attention problems? So listen to anyone who's listening. I think you know yourself well enough to have a little sit down a little come to come to Jesus or whoever you want to come to Moses, Karen carpet or Elvis? That come to whoever moment? Yeah. And stop long enough to see. And Sarah just nailed it. Can this be better? Can I be doing better? Can I be feeling better? Because I'll tell you what, sometimes we're going at the speed of light. And we don't do that. And I do take the time to do that, Sarah.

Sarah Burke  13:17  
That's where the routine comes in.

Jann Arden  13:20  
Do I ever adhere to a routine on the road? I called a friend as soon as I landed, just to say that I couldn't make a birthday dinner tomorrow, which I felt bad about. I thought I was flying on Sunday, but I'm actually flying tomorrow. But she said how are you sleeping out there? And I said really good. But I do my same routine. Any hotel room I'm in than I do at home. I write in my journal every night, every night every night, whether it's one paragraph,

Sarah Burke  13:46  
I got back to that good. I'm so happy. It's helpful. It's so helpful. Yeah, just like a brain dump before bed. Yeah. But I think there's a lot of stigma around ADHD. And you know, like the words focus or lack of focus, and laziness versus procrastination versus all these things get thrown around the time blindness and hyper focus is really interesting. I have this thing. It used to piss my ex boyfriend off so much, because I would get into starting a project at work like right before leaving when I used to work at Sirius XM call at like, 430 it would be 630. And this guy is like, Hello, are you coming home for dinner? Work ended an hour and a half ago. Hello, are you there? And I would just be in a zone and like needing to finish what I did. So it works both ways. In that sense. You're either hyper focused, or not understanding where to put your focus, I would say so. I'm looking forward to like, I'm so curious about it. I've been listening to this great ADHD audiobook. And, you know, one thing that came up was like some people lose interest in relationships, like how it impacts other parts of your life. And I was like, oh, yeah, like that's definitely happened to me. Where I just like I turned a corner where I'm like, I'm done with this. So that's also something like if you decide that you love someone like you really have to work through keeping it interesting and exciting. It's all based on dopamine.

Jann Arden  15:11  
Yeah, well, it is. It's, you know, when people fall in love, they have to understand that it's not because of the other person, it's because of what you're doing to your own body. So it's a really strange thing to think about. Because we attribute other people making us happy. You know, when you when when you have go through heartbreak, it's like someone takes your happiness, they reach into the inner depths of your heart and soul into your ribcage. And they rip out that piece of happiness. Well, they're not doing anything. Yeah. And I know that's hard to come to terms with, I've been extremely heartbroken in my life where I thought I was going to die. I felt like I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't think I don't want to work. I have no motivation. And as I've gotten older, certainly from my 2030 year old self, to myself, now, it's hard to come to terms with the fact that that was self induced, yes, there's a person involved. But yeah, anything that happened to my physical body, I did to myself, I gave myself that happiness, my brain created that happiness, whatever the illusion was, or whatever the feeling external

Sarah Burke  16:19  
factors are bringing you happiness. And that's why when the external factor, aka the person is gone, you're like,

Jann Arden  16:26  
but they're not the ones that give you the dopamine, they're not the ones that hand you that camera can change. You're the one that's creating all of this. And I think now I know, if I were to ever fall in love quotation marks, air quotes, again, I know it would be a very different version of what in love was because I always somehow surrendered a huge part of myself. I took on people's lives and their friendships and their interests. And I'm talking about when I was younger, yeah. You know, my family, my friends, my interests always took a backseat, because I thought, This is my chance, you know, I have to pursue this. And I was, I was, so I got so lost along the way. Yeah, that, like you said, when the person is removed, or, you know, and I have been left as many times as I have left, then I mean, I, I've seen both sides. Yeah, both sides of that street. I just know now that if I was in a relationship where I did feel like I was falling in love, I know, it would be a much different version of that.

Sarah Burke  17:30  
Yeah. And that's why they say you have to be like, really good with yourself to have a successful relationship, because it needs to come from within you. Anyway, I'll keep you posted on this journey. I'm super excited. To your point about understanding that like, it's not that there's something wrong with me, I just work differently. My brain is different. So there are lots of tools out there now that I'm understanding what's going on

Jann Arden  17:55  
to help. Absolutely. But I think it's really great that you are doing it and it takes a really brave, intuitive, and a person who cares about themselves to take time to do this. Thanks. And I'm sure I'm sure you're surprising yourself these days. I mean, even even the no pot thing I am and the dreaming again. I had a dream the other night, it was so weird. The night before last and last night was very short. Although I was dreaming the night before. My dad was in my dreams. And I'm always grateful when my parents appear. But yeah, we need to get a dream expert, Sarah because this dream my dad, I was looking over this fence down this long, beautiful hill and my dad was at the bottom of this valley. And there were all these piglets down there. And he had this piglet in his hand and it was squealing and screaming and he was going to kill it. And I was screaming at him. Like don't you God damn.

Sarah Burke  18:47  
Touch that pig. Sounds like the middle Moors. Well, who knows?

Jann Arden  18:51  
I mean, but that was very visceral and very real. And I woke up and I thought, Oh, bummer. I can't believe that. My dad shows up in a dream like that being a debt.

Sarah Burke  19:03  
Yeah, well work on a dream specialist. That'd be super interesting.

Jann Arden  19:07  
I wonder well, if you guys are dream specialists call us DM us send us a voicemail for real yeah

Sarah Burke  19:22  
what else has been going on? You said you had lots to talk about

Jann Arden  19:24  
traveling is something else but being on tour with Rick must

Sarah Burke  19:28  
be so fun.

Jann Arden  19:30  
It's a really amazing feeling because what's happening for me? A I'm so grateful people are showing up. But Rick and I are telling stories. And it feels like a really old art that sometimes is dying because it's not a comedy routine. We're not up there doing made up bits about so my wife diggity Dong Dong Ding Bing you know that click click boom kind of stuff. It's not stand up comedy. Yeah, it's Storytelling in the best possible way. And it's he and I, you know, talking about how we met talking about the mercerie port, I was on that show for 15 years doing all kinds of crap from, you know, going down a lose track, or Brahma bull riding or paint balling or dangling from a climbing wall or the CN Tower, or there was no end to the stuff that we did. Yeah. But then, you know, we touch on that. And then we start getting into, and it's different every night, childhood stories. I love this. There's so funny. And then his story kind of leads me into thinking about something that I did with my dad, or you know, how our parents affected our childhood. People get in there, and they laugh for 90 minutes nonstop. And the most hilarious part is we have a huge QR code on the screen behind us. And so when you come in, you guys are millennials. Now look, are you we are we are Gen X's Gen z's. And you can click on your phone, and you can send us a question while we are getting four or five 600 questions every night. Right. One of the questions the other night was if you guys were in a throttle, who would the third person be? Well, the audience goes absolutely crazy. So oh my god. So we thought okay, you pick who you'd have for us, Rick, and I'll pick who I'd have for us. Rick would not say he would. He says I'm not doing it. I'm not going there. And I think mine was Clint Eastwood, young Clint Eastwood. Okay. Like he's going like old wrinkly bomb Clint Eastwood. I said no, like Fistful of Dollars. Good, bad. And the ugly. Yeah. Or Olivia Newton, John. Oh, yeah. Well, the audience just fell pieces. Like they just, they just thought that was so funny. And then there's so many questions. Like I said to Chris, the first night, my road manager, I said, What's the general gist of these questions? And he's like, Jen, there are so many sexual questions.

Sarah Burke  22:03  
He's reviewing them before they come to you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He

Jann Arden  22:06  
vets everything goes through, like literally 600 questions, and we each get we answer about for each like we ask each other these questions. But he says I was so gobsmacked when those questions started coming in the first night of when was the first time you slept together? Why don't you guys get married? Like who made the first move? Like who made you ever? Date Rick? No, no, God, no, never. Okay, this is yeah, he's had a male partner, Gerald, he's been with him for like, 30 years. Okay. Okay. So yeah, Rick is very gay. Like, I was talking to him about girlfriends. And he lived with a woman for a while, you know, out of high school. And I'm still so shocked that half of the questions are above are of that nature. I

Sarah Burke  22:51  
will make sure that when he comes on the show, later this month that our first question is not who would be in your throwable?

Jann Arden  22:57  
Is that not funny? It's pretty fucking funny. It's good. Oh, my God, what I was getting to is when you see two or 3000 people coming into a venue, and they don't know what to expect, and the set looks beautiful. And we've got a video components. That's really cool. There's lots of clips from the Mercer report and there's it's really fun. But the laughter is so infectious to see people laughing cry, laughing and bending over and looking at each other and smiling like every piece of trouble, worry, sorrel, concern anxiety. They sit down with it, I can see them sitting in it when they come in. And then within about 1015 minutes, I literally see this gray haze lift. And it floats to the back of the arena back of the theater and it goes out the exit doors. You just see a brightness. It's such a privilege to be standing there and to be part of bringing joy, just unadulterated gut busting laughter about really ordinary things that connect us all, you know, to be part of a tradition that goes back literally 1000s of years with people traveling minstrels or traveling theatre companies. You know, people have always done that. And musicians, artists, actors, we've always traveled, you know, and I said that to Rick, it's so funny that in 2024, we're doing something exactly the same as they were doing and 1224 That's so well to think of being they were in wagons, they loaded up their food, they had their families with them, and they went from little village to village and they sat up and they did this oral tradition and you have to understand that a lot of people back then didn't read and write everything that they did. That's why anything religious anything biblical was out of reach for the for most people While there was maybe four or 5% of people that had reading skills and religion back then it was all in fucking Latin to so they didn't have any access to these sacred, educational inspiring words. They had to go listen to somebody else say them. And if they didn't speak Latin, they would sit in a church near dumbfounded by what it was. Anyway. So

Sarah Burke  25:22  
you're gonna go to England this week. And then Caitlin and I are going to see you by the time this episode is out within 24 hours. We're gonna see you in Toronto at Massey Hall, or was it Roy Thompson? Yeah.

Jann Arden  25:32  
Roy Thompson Hall. Yeah. So we have there. I think there's like 100 tickets left. The evening one is sold out.

Sarah Burke  25:39  
That's the one we're coming to.

Jann Arden  25:40  
But there's 100. Some odd tickets left for the Mother's Day matinee. Yeah, Roy Thompson Hall, but I don't know if people will hear this in time for that to make any difference to so right.

Sarah Burke  25:51  
But yeah, the this will come out on the Friday right before Mother's Day. I don't want to catch you off guard with anything. But is it? No. Is it hard? Being on the road on Mother's Day for you? I know, you had a really close relationship with your mom. Yeah.

Jann Arden  26:04  
You know, it isn't anymore. I think there's a very soft place for my mom. I think other people I know some people find it really difficult on birthdays and special occasions. And Christmas is coming around. And I had more time with my mom and more of an opportunity to be with my mom, because you're looking after her. She didn't die in a plane crash. She didn't die in a car accident. You know, she didn't suffer from some long, painful thing. My mom's she wasn't in pain. She had Alzheimer's. But she was quite cheery at some, you know, sometimes she was had a really great sense of humor, but my God to be able to look after her and to get to know her almost in a childlike way because I became the mother. Yeah. And I really did experience what it must have felt like to have children, because I was apparent to my mother. And it's funny because mom would say to me, you know, I said to her many times, you know, do you know who I am? Yes, you're Jann Arden. And you're my mother. And I'd say, well, that's so funny mom, because you're my mom to know, I said you are? You're my mom as well. And she just would light up. You know, she, yeah, she really, she felt looked after. So she thought of me as her mom. So what a privilege

Sarah Burke  27:25  
all this stuff. Like, when I spend time with my parents at the cottage. I'm just like, Oh my God, how did I waste so much time not spending time with them. Like, that's what's in the back of my head. Like, I'm so grateful for the time

Jann Arden  27:35  
you're getting older. We don't think of that when we're in our 20s. We just don't I know. We want to get the fuck out of there. And we want to go live our own things. And we don't want to be told what to do. We want to make our own

Sarah Burke  27:48  
I was the worst. I used to tell my mom I hated her. Like I was so rude. Well,

Jann Arden  27:53  
it's not indigenous to you that that formula is repeated over and over and repeated about 100,000 times today by various mothers and daughters across the planet, whether they're in Africa, China, Korea, a daughter was saying, I hate you. Yeah, I don't want to be here anymore. And you don't, you don't know me. And you

Sarah Burke  28:18  
know what I will say to my mom now, mom, because I know she listens to the podcast every week. I know I was a bitch. And that I didn't make you feel the best. But now you are my favorite person. And you are my best friend. So I love you, mom.

Jann Arden  28:33  
And that is what the point is, you can just get on our track, and go to that spot. That's not how our humaneness works. We are our character comes from our disappointments, our failures, our crashes, our our lack of understanding. Our character comes from all the chaos and the ruin. And then when we find it, it sure is satisfying to be able to say to your mom, I'm sorry, I was like that. But you know what, you also had a brain that was developing. You know, I feel like I'm finally just in the last few years the person that I want to be true. Oh, my God, it takes so long to become a person. Yeah, and, you know, there's nothing more annoying than a fucking 25 year old that knows everything that, you know, can show up and suck the air out of a room with their entitlement, their lack of empathy, their lack of tolerance, their lack of understanding, but I also cut them a very wide girth because their brains are growing. Yeah. They're just they're just becoming of Britain. We're blobs of flesh for a long, long time. And then all of a sudden we kind of get it but we sure have to skin our knees a lot. Yeah, because it's, anyway, don't be hard on yourself.

Sarah Burke  30:14  
What was your favorite thing about your mom leave us with that.

Jann Arden  30:17  
My mom was so friggin funny without knowing it. She said so many things that made me laugh. I just like to silly things like my friend. My friend's sister was going out with a guy from Australia for like a year this hot and heavy, wicked romance from Australia. And I told my mom, many times, you know, Australia, Australia, and every time she talked about this particular situation, well, how is your friend doing with that fellow from Afghanistan? I'm like, Oh, my God, this isn't Alzheimer's. This was just an a word. Okay. Yeah. And it would just send me just laughing. But my mom would always say to me, Jan, like no matter what was going on, and I was always flying off the handle, I was like you, Sarah, I was just like, I would go from zero to 105 seconds. If something didn't go my way, if I lost my phone for five minutes, or, you know, if they were needing me to do something that I just didn't have time for, oh, can you fix the remote for dad and I, we hit a button. And we don't know how to get it back onto the satellite. And I was just Jesus Christ, and blah, blah, blah. And mom would always say, Jan, it's not the end of the world. And I know every mother says that. But the way my mom tied little bits of cloth and string in the trees for the birds and the way she stood there and looked out the window, with folded arms, watching the clouds go by and thinking or looking at a squirrel, burying and not the way she was observing the things that I never even paid any attention to. And I remember her saying to me when she was quite sick, and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. She said, she held on to my forearm, and she said, Who will feed the birds? When I'm not here? And I thought like, in that moment, I thought I'll feed the birds. And you do and I do. I don't know why I didn't see the birds before. I don't know why I didn't appreciate what was around my mum loves birds. I wish younger people could find them. Yeah, earlier, but it's not the way it works. And I understand that now. It just isn't. Yeah. But I think if we're going to survive in the world, and if we're going to make a difference, younger people need to see the birds sooner than we did. Sarah. Yeah, they need to see they need to connect again, with nature, they need to connect, and I'm not talking about put your phones down like Fuck, it's not helping telling kids not to be on their phones, because it's not going to happen. They're not going to do that balance. Once again, it's the balance, but they need to find and appreciate a tree, they have to connect with it. Or we will be doomed. So these connections, they may seem just kind of trivial, like old lady things, but they're not. They're really specific of what happens in our minds and in our hearts and souls. The connecting of the dots, brings instant empathy and caring. And you think about where your food comes from, and you're thinking I couldn't kill that fucking chicken. If I couldn't electrocute a pig. I couldn't put a fucking nail through a cow's head, but we pay other people to do it. Anyway, I will leave on a happy note. And that is gonna say, oh, boy, no, no, no, I know. But those things are important too.

Sarah Burke  33:47  
Yes, all of it is I.

Jann Arden  33:50  
But if if Sarah Burke can find her way back to her mother and have her mother be her greatest champion and friend, other young women that are struggling with the relationships with their mothers, they can find their way too. So all y'all out there listening. I don't care if you're 20 or 70. And your mom's still around and you've had a hard time connecting with your mom. It's never too late. It's never too late to find. Yeah, it's never too late to find a spark. You know, when you're 60 your mom's still your mom when you're 70 your mom's still your mom. Jane Goodall a big part of her speech when I spoke to her three weeks ago in Vancouver was her mother and how her mother enabled her to go out into the world with bravery and confidence. Her mother went with her on those first early trips to Tanzania. Her mom was with her so special.

Anyway, I'm thinking about you guys on your own mother's day and we really appreciate you listening in. We might have a few voice notes. See if we do

Speaker 1  34:55  
Yeah, yeah. Hi, Jen. It's Maureen from Kamloops, BC Thank you so much for having taro Laurie on your recent show, I looked her up on Instagram and listened to her latest Moon Ritual. It really spoke to me as the phrase I choose to release was used over and over. My one word for this year is release as I'm releasing my 32 year teaching career and retiring at the end of June. It's interesting that I can predict a full moon with uncanny accuracy as my grade one students get a little squirrely close to that time each month. As it released my career and all the bittersweet emotions that come with that. I look forward to my first September off since I was five. I will be going to Europe for my first time and I'm hoping that you'll do another riverboat cruise there at some point as that is on my travel bucket list. Thanks, Jan. Love your music and this podcast. Hi,

Speaker 2  35:49  
my name is Susan. I started listening to your podcast on gonna say four weeks ago ish. And I've been fast tracking through them from the beginning. I love them. I love all three of you. I feel like I know you. You give me laughs You give me insight. You're just smart, brilliant, wonderful women and your podcast always makes my morning happy. You keep asking for voice messages or whatever they call these. I'm kind of a dork when it comes to this, so I thought I'd send one. The funniest thing is that I just listened to your podcast today about Caitlyn losing her job, and you guys branching out. And so I added Sara and Caitlin on my Instagram. I'm already following you Jan, because I love you. I love Rick Mercer. But I see this post from Caitlin's husband of will. And I just want to reach out and say oh my God, he's so cute. He looks like little businessman. And he's just adorable. And then I remember like, I feel like I know you guys, but you guys really don't know me. So it's just a weird thing when you start listening to someone's podcasts and you just feel like you're a part of their life. They're certainly a part of yours. Anyways, I want to thank you. I'm rambling. Thank you all, all three of you.

Speaker 3  37:03  
Hi, Jan, it's Kim from Ottawa. I wanted to send a voice note, my very first woman to let you know that I have just finished the middle Mars. I was a little skeptical when I first started reading talking cows, you know, but I loved it. Love, love, loved it. Love the story. Love the characters. I loved everything about it. And I especially love the ending. I was cheering at the ending. And thank you for sticking with that and writing that book. And I sure hope you have another novel in you because it was awesome. Thanks so much for all you do for the podcast. I've been a longtime listener. I tell everybody about podcast. I love it. Ladies, keep it up.

Speaker 4  37:50  
Hi Jen, Caitlin, and Sarah. My name is Anne Marie Aikens and I live in Toronto. I've listened and watched a Jen as her career growth for years and years and years. And I can't wait to see her on Sunday in Toronto with Rick Mercer because it's Mother's Day and it's my was a gift to myself. Because it's one of my greatest accomplishments. But I'm sure I'll be loving all the way through it. Learn that from you guys.

Sarah Burke  38:15  
Here's a little Mother's Day message from our girl Kaitlyn.

Speaker 5  38:18  
Happy Mother's Day to all of our Jan pod pals. I am going to be celebrating this Mother's Day by getting a tattoo in honor of will. So I'm very excited about that. I also think it'll probably be a little bit painful. So I don't know if it's appropriate to have a mimosa before you get a tattoo. But we're gonna find out this weekend. And I do want to acknowledge as well that Mother's Day isn't always just happy brunch photos on Instagram. It can be a weird day for a lot of people, it can be challenging, and you maybe want to just avoid it because perhaps you've lost your mom, maybe the journey to becoming a mom, if you've want to do that hasn't been an easy one. Maybe you have a challenging relationship with your mom, whatever it is. I've had weird mother's days and lots of people have something I learned was all the DMS and all the really nice supportive messages I've received is that it's not the most simple day of the year. So if you are not really going to be celebrating it or maybe you're going to spend Mother's Day just being a loving parent to yourself. I salute you and I say do what I would do, which is go and get a baked good. Craig's cookies, a croissant, whatever that looks like. You do it and enjoy this day.

Sarah Burke  39:34  
And if I could leave you with a laugh about my mom, one of the things I love the most about my mom is when I FaceTime her she still picks up the phone like this. I'm like Mom, I'm looking at your ear.

Jann Arden  39:45  
Yeah, you know, it's a different generation. I don't blame them anyway. I'm glad you still have your mom. My mom's out there. She's She's tripping the light. Fantastic, that's for sure. And my dad is apparently trying to kill a pig. So there you go.

Sarah Burke  39:59  
Well I look out at our socials this weekend too, because yeah, Caitlin and I, we're gonna make sure that we say hi to Janet her show and Yeah, well, we'll take you behind the scenes a little bit at at the Jan Arden pod. Absolutely.

Jann Arden  40:11  
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time toodledoo